Listen: Russell St Bombers – Way I Live

Russell St Bombers, presumably named after the 1986 car bombing of the Russell Street Police building in Melbourne, is a punk group featuring members from The Zingers and Flesh World, among others. ‘Way I Live’ features on a demo cassette now available through Future Archaic, and according to the label the band is “ideologically attracted to the history of Australian Trade Unionism, mobilisation and anti state terrorism.”

The bellowing vocals are the most striking element in ‘Way I Live’, while the instrumentation is a lot more complex than first impressions suggest, with some neat but not-too-ostentatious guitar flourishes kicking around. The band cites Crisis and Venom P Stinger as influences, and the vocals definitely put me in mind of the former group on their excellent (and recently reissued) record Hymns of Faith.